Figures

Chemical structures of (A) TC7 and (B) the control compounds TC6 and DC7. (C) Images of the TC7 samples with different water content [TC7n-H1 is used to abbreviate samples with TC7: water (H) ratio of n: 1 (w/w)]. (D) Fibers drawn from TC710-H1 (i and ii); fiber of TC73-H1 injected to hexane (rhodamine B was added to the glue to make it clearly visible) (iii); fiber generated by coating glass slides with TC75-H1 and then pulling them apart (at 80°C) (iv).

Fig. 2The nature of water molecules in TC7-H materials.

(A) ATR-IR spectra of TC7 samples prepared with H2O and D2O (TC710-H1 and TC710-D1). (B) H/D exchange experiments conducted on TC710-D1 adhesive (for details, see the Supplementary Materials). (C) The dependence of DC conductivity σdc versus 1/T for TC7-H materials with different water content. (D) Dielectric loss versus frequency for TC7-H materials with different water content at a temperature of −100°C: Frequency dependence of loss peaks due to hydrogen bonding between TC7 and water (maxima labeled in pink) and between two adjacent TC7 molecules (red labels). (E) Averaged hydrogen-bond strengths (EHB) of crown ether–water systems with different number of water molecules (Nwater) as obtained from the density functional theory (DFT) calculations: Some representative molecular structures are shown here (inserted chemical structures) and in fig. S26. The gray, red, and white spheres are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms, respectively. Hydrogen-bonds are indicated by short black-dashed lines. Blue horizontal–dashed and dot-dashed lines represent the theoretical and experimental EHB’s of bulk ice Ih, respectively.

(A) Illustration of the pull-off adhesion test. (B) Comparison of the adhesion effect of TC710-H1 and commercially available adhesive poly(vinyl acetate) (PVA) glue at 25°C. (C) Adhesion strength of TC710-H1 at different temperatures. (D) Recycling tests of TC710-H1 at 25°C.